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Reprinted from Memoirs ok the International Congress of Anthropology. 
Chicago; Schulte Publishing Co. Copyright. 




ON VARIOUS SUPPOSED RELATIONS BETWEEN THE 
AMERICAN AND ASIAN RACES. 
BY D. G. BRINTON. 

HHE isolation of the American race from the earliest prehistoric 



times seems to have been so complete that any positive evi- 
* dence that it was perceptibly influenced in its development, 
either physical or psychical, by any other race, is exceedingly scant, 
if it exists at all. As for myself, though certainly willing to welcome 
any clear testimony to such influence, I have been unable to find any 
which will bear even slight examination. To illustrate this, I shall in 
this paper briefly review a number of recent assertions as to the sup- 
posed relations between the American and Asian races in compara- 
tively recent or ancient times, and see if they have any real bearing 
on the question, or are of value in its solution. 

I should naturally begin with a study of the alleged physical re- 
semblances between the two races; but I may be dispensed from that, 
as but a few years ago I had the honor of reading before the Ameri- 
can Association a paper disproving the alleged Mongoloid resemblances 
of the American race.* When this paper was published, it was vigor- 
ously attacked by Dr. Ten Kate, but has since been amply supported 
by the researches of Fritsch, of Berlin, on the hair of the American 
Indians, and of Virchow, on their skulls. In the Compte Rendu of 
the Congress of Americanists for 1890, Dr. Ten Kate, indeed, repeats 
his Mongoloid theory, offering no new evidence, but is astonished and 
sad at the defection of his fellow-countrymen, especially Fritsch, from 
his favorite hypothesis. The defection, however, is steadily growing, 
and Dr. Ten Kate will soon be the only ethnic anatomist of repute 
who lays much stress on the points of resemblance he has noted. 

Of late, much more has been made of the resemblances of arts, 
religions, traditions symbolisms and languages, than of physical 



^Reprinted in my Essays of an Americanist, pp. 55-66 (Phila. 1890). 




145 



146 THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 

traits; so to these mental products I shall now turn, to see what they 
are alleged to offer in proof of some former connection between the 
people of the two continents. 

Of course, everybody knows that across the narrow straits of 
Behring there has been going on a commercial interchange for untold 
generations. For time out of mind, several large fairs have been 
annually held on the west coast of Alaska at various points to which 
representatives of Asiatic tribes journeyed, bringing with them the 
products peculiar to their continent, including slaves, both male and 
female, which were bartered for such American commodities as were 
desired. In an article printed about a year ago, I gave, from infor- 
mation furnished me by officers of our navy, the localities and seasons 
of these fairs.* By this agency many articles from various parts of 
Siberia, and doubtless also many customs, and more or less Asiatic 
blood, were introduced into the tribes of the extreme Northwest, the 
Tlinkit, the Tinneh, and especially the Eskimos. 

Through this channel I would explain the transmission of the 
Chinese temple-coins found as the eye-pieces of a wooden mask in an 
ancient Chilcat grave by Lieut. T. Dix Bolles, a few years ago.f He 
acknowledges that the objects could claim no great antiquity, as the 
mask still retained, even in that wet climate, a sparse fringe of human 
hair around it. He guesses the age of the grave at two hundred 
years, which we may well allow. 

To the same source we may attribute those customs of the West- 
ern Eskimo to which Mr. John Murdoch has assigned a Siberian 
origin, such as the general use of tobacco in pipes of a peculiar form; 
the employment of nets in fishing; and the art of catching fowls by 
means of small stones at the end of a cord, known as " bird-bolas." 
Mr. Murdoch does not pretend that these testify to any very ancient 
communications between the two continents; on the contrary, his 
words are: " That these customs were acquired at a comparatively 
recent date is shown by the fact that they all stop short at Cape 
Bathurst."t 

The Asiatic origin of the Eskimos has been a favorite subject 
with several recent writers. They are quite dissatisfied if they cannot 
at least lop these hyperboreans from the American stem, and graft 



* Printed in Science, May 20, 1892. 

f Bolles, " On Chinese Relics in Alaska," in Proc. National Museum, Vol. XV. 
X Murdoch, in American Anthropologist, October, 1888. 



ON VARIOUS SUPPOSED RELATIONS, ETC. 



147 



them on some Asian stock. That worthy student, the Abbe Emile 
Petitot, has published in the Bulletin de la Societe Normande de 
Geograpbie, for 1890, a brief setting forth this side of the case. He 
marshals the evidence, first, from the traditions of the Eskimo, which 
he asserts trace the ancestral horde back to Asia; secondly, he presents 
what he claims are numerous linguistic analogies of the Eskimo to the 
Ural-Altaic tongues; and he concludes by pointing out many resem- 
blances in customs. It seriously militates against the supposed lin- 
guistic analogies that they are denied flatly by Dr. Heinrich Winkler, 
probably as good an authority as any on the Ural-Altaic tongues; 
while the value of tradition on this question cannot be rated very 
high, and the similarities of custom are such as obtain between any 
two tribes of about the same grade of culture the world over. 

The recklessness with which such statements are sometimes made 
is illustrated by the following sentence beginning a paper by M. Desire 
Charnay in the Compte Rendu of the VHIth session of the Congress 
of Americanists: " The traditions of the civilized peoples of America 
state that they came from Asia, and all speak of their rafts and houses 
of wood, acalli, in which the emigrants crossed Behring Straits." 
The assumption in this sentence that the early nations of Mexico were 
acquainted with the continent of Asia and the Straits of Behring is 
something sublime in its audacity. The writer goes on to find anal- 
ogies between the culture and customs of Mexico and those of China, 
Cambodia, Assyria, Chaldea and Asia Minor. I grant he finds plenty, 
but I ask, Are we therefore to transport all these ancient peoples, or 
representatives of them, into Mexico? 

What kind of analogies are those on which these writers rely to 
establish their thesis of an Asiatic immigration? I shall quote a num- 
ber advanced by that excellent antiquary, M. Eugene Boban, in a work 
published in Paris last year.* He says that certain of the Mexican 
tribes are " bien certainenient" of Chinese origin, because they have 
arts which are just alike. Both nations, for instance, made paper; 
both tanned leather, cut and polished precious stones, worked feathers 
into dresses and ornaments, moulded pottery, cultivated gardens, 
named their children after stars and flowers, and so on. He well says 
that he could ' ' remplir bien des pages " with such analogies. So he 
could: as that the people of both nations slept at night; that they ate 



* Catalogue Raisonnee de la Collection Goupil, Tome II., pp. 65, 66. 



148 THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 

both meat and vegetables when they could get them; that they wore 
clothing when it was cold, and equally surprising coincidences. 

But the inner stronghold of those who defend the Asiatic origin 
of Mexican and Central American civilization is, I am well aware, de- 
fended by no such feeble outposts as these, but by a triple line of in- 
trenchment, consisting respectively of the Mexican calendar, the game 
of patolli, and the presence of Asiatic jade in America. I shall attack 
them seriatim: and first for the calendar. 

Alexander von Humboldt is responsible for assigning to the 
calendar in use before the conquest throughout much of Mexico and 
Central America an Asiatic origin. He declared that it was derived 
from that in current use by Thibetan and Tartar tribes ; and so great 
has been the weight of his authority that even such a writer as Dr. 
Edward B. Tylor does not hesitate to say that Humboldt " proved " 
this assertion;* and the learned Mexican archaeologist, the late Orozco 
y Berra, also accepted it without hesitation.! 

Yet, in fact, there is absolutely no similarity between the Thibetan 
calendar and the primitive form of the American, as we find it among 
the Zapotecas, which form Orozco y Berra himself acknowledged 
was at the basis of all others found in Mexico or the adjacent regions. 
The American calendar was not intended as a year-count, but as a 
ritual and formulary. Its signs had nothing to do with the signs of 
the zodiac, as had all those in the Thibetan and Tartar calendars; 
and, moreover, we can trace it developing in quite different directions 
during the process in various tribes of bringing it into relation with 
the civil year-count. No one who will carefully trace the evolution 
of the Mexican calendar through the variations it assumed among the 
Maya tribes, the Nahuas, the Tarascos and the Mixtecas, can harbor 
any further doubt about it being a wholly indigenous American pro- 
duction. Humboldt himself said that the calendar of the Chibchas 
of South America more closely resembled those of Central Asia than 
did that of Mexico. 

I next turn to the game of patolli, which, according to Dr. Ed- 
ward B. Tylor, was an adaptation by the ancient Mexicans of the game 
of parchesi, familiar to-day in Hindostan.J It is a game allied to 
backgammon, and in Mexico was played with beans marked on one 



* In the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, 1878. 
t In his Historia Antigua de Mexico, Tom III., cap. VIII. (Mexico, 1880.) 
% Dr. Tylor's article is in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute for 1878. 



ON VARIOUS SUPPOSED RELATIONS, ETC. 149 



side, which took the place of dice. This game has lately been made 
the subject of careful study by Mr. Culin, of the University of Penn- 
sylvania, and Mr. Frank Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology; and I 
am authorized to say that both these competent authorities agree that 
there can be no doubt but that patolli is thoroughly American in 
origin, no matter how closely it assimilates the East Indian game. 

Having disposed of the calendar and patolli y I shall next pick up 
the article of jade, and see what it tells us about the Asian immigra- 
tion, growing now somewhat hazy. Jade and its significance is a 
favorite subject with our distinguished member, Professor Putnam, 
and he has in various passages of his reports of the Peabody Museum 
at Cambridge spoken of the potent testimony it renders to the ancient 
commerce and interchange of arts and art-products between America 
and Asia. The force of the argument lies in the assumption that cer- 
tain ancient implements of this material discovered in America are in 
a variety of it not obtainable outside of Southern Asia. 

Professor Putnam and his associates in this opinion are not will- 
ing to accept the decision of Dr. A. B. Meyer, of Dresden, that jade, 
jadeite and nephrite are found so widely over the world, and of so 
many varieties, that it is no longer admissible to found upon them an 
ethnologic theory; they have not been convinced by the admirably 
thorough paper by Dr. Virchow before the Congress of Americanists, 
in 1888, indorsing fully the opinion of Dr. Meyer; they reject the 
words of that competent authority, Dieck, at the same congress, when 
he said: ' ' We have no occasion to call in the aid of a Mongoloid or 
Asiatic immigration to explain the presence of these green-stone tools 
in America. " More than this, they seem to be undisturbed by the 
yearly discovery of more and more localities where jade is found in 
situ on this continent, and the presentation of objects in this stone 
from new regions, as those sent by Dr. Ernst from Venezuela. 
Others, however, must admit that no variety of jade whatever, from 
a purely mineralogical point of view, can attest ethnic wanderings. 

It seems scarcely worth while seriously to consider the evidence 
brought forward from tradition and so-called pre-Columbian history. 
The hoariest records there are anywhere in America trace the migra- 
tions of tribes for not more than a very few centuries previous to the dis- 
covery by Columbus; and, by any fair construction, never beyond a 
short distance from the nation's central station. Even with regard to 
the ample and reasonably ancient traditions of the Nahuas, of the 
Valley of Mexico, we may safely adopt the opinion of the learned 



1 50 THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 

Ramirez, that the geographical area to which they refer will scarcely 
carry us beyond the limits of the valley itself. 

That there should be frequent parallelisms in the religious tradi- 
tions, the myths, and the stories of gods and demi-gods, will surprise 
no one who has extended his studies of comparative mythology over 
the savage races of all continents. The development of the religious 
sentiment, the gropings of man in the dark, to find out and define to 
his intelligence the mysterious power which masters the storm, moves 
the stars, and visits death and life, fate and fortune, on the sons of 
men, bear in all times and climes an almost fixed relation to the gen- 
eral intellectual development of the individual and the community. 
The same is substantially true of folklore and of many institutions 
of social life and family ties. The day is certainly past when an eth- 
nologist of ripe culture will prefer the genealogic to the anthropologic 
explanation of such similarities, even if they progress to identities. 

The same is doubly true of symbolism. I do not deny that we 
find on American soil and among primitive American tribes the sacred 
symbols of the Orient, svastika of the Aryans, the iai hi of the Chi- 
nese, the cross of Christianity. The circle, the quadrilateral, the tri- 
angle, the serpent, the bird and the tree, the sacred numbers three, 
four and seven, the significant members, the hand, the tongue and 
the phallus — all these and many more possessed to the dark-hued 
tribes of America as mysterious and as pregnant a significance as they 
did to the worshipers in the temples by the Nile, or to the white- 
robed priests in the isles of Greece. 

This is, indeed, matter of amazement, food for reflection; but 
our amazement springs from the consideration how man, everywhere 
different, is yet everywhere the same; and our reflection is that, what- 
soever is his history, by whatsoever environment he is surrounded, in 
his slow progress from the darkness of savagery to the light of civili- 
zation he treads the same path, aids himself by the same weak sup- 
ports, and seeks the same material wrappings in which to swathe the 
feeble progeny of his intellect and imagination. 

I have reserved for the last the linguistic question: Do any of 
the numerous languages and innumerable dialects of America present 
any affinities, judged by the standards of the best modern linguistic 
schools, which would bring them into genetic relationship with any 
of the dialects of Asia? 

1 believe I have a right to speak with some authority on this sub- 
ject, for the American languages have constituted the principal study 



ON VARIOUS SUPPOSED RELATIONS, ETC. l5l 

of my life; and I say unhesitatingly that no such affinities have been 
shown; and I say this with an abundant acquaintance with such works 
as The Prehistoric Comparative Philology of Dr. Hyde Clarke; with 
the writings of the Rev. John Campbell, who has discovered the 
Hittite language in America before we have learned where it was in 
Asia; with the laborious Comparative Philology of Mr. R. P. Greg; 
with the Amerikanisch-Asiatische Etymologien of the ardent Am- 
ericanist Mr. Julius Platzmann; with the proof that the Nahuatl is an 
Aryan language, furnished by the late director of the National Mu- 
seum of Mexico, Senor Gumesindo Mendoza; with Varnhagen's array 
of evidence that the Tupi and Carib are Turanian dialects imported 
into Brazil from Siberia; with the Abbe Petitot's conviction that the 
Tinneh of Canada is a Semitic dialect; with Naxera's identification of 
the Otomi with the Chinese; and with many more such scientific 
vagaries which, in the auctioneer's phrase, are too tedious to mention. 

When I see volumes of this character, many involving prolonged 
and arduous research on the part of the authors and a corresponding 
sacrifice of pleasant things in other directions, I am affected by a sense 
of deep commiseration for able men who expend their efforts in pur- 
suit of such will-o'-the-wisps of science, panting along roads which 
lead nowhere, inattentive to the guide-posts which alone can direct 
them to solid ground. 

What one of the works I have mentioned respects those prin- 
ciples of phonetic variation, of systematic derivation, of the historic 
comparison of languages, of grammatic evolution, of morphologic 
development, which are as accurately known to-day as the laws of 
chemistry or electricity? Not one of them. And yet to attempt 
comparisons in disregard of these laws is as insensate as to start on an 
ocean voyage without a compass or an instrument of observation. 
The craft is lost as soon as it is out of sight of land. 

1 maintain, therefore, in conclusion, that up to the present time 
there has not been shown a single dialect, not an art nor an institu- 
tion, not a myth or religious rite, not a domesticated plant or animal, 
not a tool, weapon, game or symbol, in use in America at the time of 
the discovery, which had been previously imported from Asia, or 
from any other continent of the Old World. 



LINGUISTICS. 



THE PRESENT STATUS OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS. 

BY DANIEL G. BRINTON. 
[Abstract.] 

THE survey of American linguistics which I shall present to you 
shall have as its chief object the indication of the fields which 
have been least cultivated, and which, for this reason, demand 
the closer attention of future workers. 

In the extreme north, the various Eskimo dialects have of late 
been studied by a number of competent observers, and their relation- 
ship rendered more clear, while their sharp contrast to the Ural-Altaic 
languages has become evident. In the Dene, or Athabascan, the labors 
of the Rev. A. J. Morice in the west have supplied excellent material 
for the important comparisons which should be instituted between the 
De'ne' of the northern interior and the dialects of the coast, and the 
Navaho and Apache of the south. The relationship of the northwest 
coast tongues has been most fruitfully examined by Dr. Boas, whose 
conclusions will be laid before this Congress. 

Throughout the United States the native tongues have long been 
systematically studied by the linguists of the Bureau of Ethnology, 
and many interesting discoveries have resulted. The linguistic map 
lately issued by the Bureau will long be the guide to laborers in this 
field. To Mr. Horatio Hale we owe, among many other valuable 
contributions, the discovery of the extension of the Dakota stock to 
the eastern seaboard among the Tuteloes, a suggestion followed up 
by Messrs. Gatschet and Dorsey in the identification of the Biloxis, 
and probably the Catawbas, as other members of the same family. 
We still ask further evidence of the identification of the Cherokee 
with the Iroquois; and the stocks of Texas, Southern Florida and 
Southern California are not yet positively established. 

In Mexico, under the active supervision of Dr. Antonio Penafiel, 
a mass of material has been collected in the shape of vocabularies by 
the Ministerio del Fomento; but practically none of this has been 

335 



336 THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 

published. It is very likely that entirely new and unknown linguistic 
stocks survive in this republic, and it is certain that of many 
languages and dialects still spoken there we possess only the most 
meager information. We cannot too strongly urge upon the intelli- 
gent scholars of our sister republic to collect and publish the new 
linguistic material which is at their hands in the less traveled portions 
of their own country. 

The same cannot be said of the Central American, or, as 1 have 
called it in my work on " The American Race," the "Inter-Isthmian " 
region. I do not believe that a single new stock will be discovered 
between the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and that of Panama; and the 
only important historic tribe which we cannot assign to its linguistic 
place is the Guetares of Costa Rica. Dr. C. Sapper, of Guatemala, 
has, indeed, recently promised me a vocabulary of a new stock from 
Tapachula, but I shall be surprised if on receipt it does not turn out 
to be one already familiar* 

Passing to South America, I avail myself of this opportunity ro 
make public for the first time a conclusion which I have reached, 
opposed not only to the opinion hitherto always expressed by linguists, 
but to my own former statements. This opinion, so long held, is 
that the linguistic stocks of South America are more numerous than 
those of North America. This view I have been obliged to renounce 
after a prolonged and special study of all the accessible materials con- 
cerning South American languages. I am persuaded that the really 
astonishing multitude of dialects there found will resolve themselves 
into a comparatively small number of stocks, less, certainly, than 
those already recognized in the northern continent, t 

The interesting question of the possible relationship of some of 
these stocks with tongues on the northern continent has been noted 
by Herzog, Uhle, Adam, Ernst, and others, and is eminently deserv- 
ing of continued investigation. It cannot be said that, up to the 
present, wholly satisfactory results have been reached. 

We have recent and excellent studies of the Carib by Von den 
Steinen and Adam, of the Southern Brazilian dialects by Ehrenreich, 



*This proved to be the case, as it is found to be a dialect of the Zoque- 
Mixe family. 

fSome evidence may be seen in my Studies of South American V^ative 
Languages. (Philadelphia, 1892.) 



THE PRESENT STATUS OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS. 337 

of the Pano by R. de la Grasserie, who also contributes one on the 
Puquina to this Congress, on the Kechua, by MiddenorfT, on the 
Tupi by Nogueira, Rodrigues and Seybold, on the Chaco dialects by 
Lafonequevedo, on the Yahcan by Brydges and Hyades; but we have 
inadequate information of the numerous tongues spoken along 
the great divide between the basins of the La Plata and Amazon 
rivers; of those which still survive in the mountains of Southern 
Colombia and Ecuador, and in Andaqui and the neighboring provinces. 
We have yet to establish the relationship, if any exists, between the 
Patagonian Tzoneca, the tongues of Fuegia, and the Great Araucan 
and Chaco families to the north. Nor can it be allowed that the last 
word has been said as to the connection of the Aymara with the 
Kechua, or of the Arawack with the Tupi. 

These are hasty references to the geographical lacunas which are 
visible on the linguistic map of America; but there are others keenly 
felt by the student who is in earnest on this subject. He perceives 
that not only in some localities the material does not exist, but that 
in others, while it does exist, it remains inaccessible. Here is where 
we should appeal urgently to governments, learned societies and the 
intelligent wealthy for aid. We shall never know Nahuatl till the 
great history written in that language by Father Sahagun, the unique 
manuscript of which is in the Medicean Library in Florence, is pub- 
lished; we can never learn the full resources of the Maya language 
until the dictionary written at the Convent of Motul in the middle of 
the sixteenth century is printed, two manuscripts of which exist— one 
in my possession. In similar case is the Micmac- English Dictionary 
of Rand, the Cakchiquel Dictionary of Coto, and many others. 
How fruitful has been the liberality of Julius Platzmann in republish- 
ing extremely rare works on American languages! How valuable the 
Library of ^American Linguistics, edited by Shea; the Bibliotbeque de 
Linguistique Americaine, published under the auspices of various 
French scholars in Paris; and the similar series brought out by 
Alphonse Pinart! 

I have scarcely left myself room to refer to many scholars who 
have made general or special studies on American languages, such as 
Friedrich Mueller, who, in his epochal Grundriss der Spracbwissen- 
scbafty offers a systematic analysis of over foity of them; of Lucien 
Adam, who, besides general studies, has published model monographs 
on the Chapanec, Mosquito, etc. ; of Charencey, whose Cbrestomathie 



338 THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY. 

OAaya merits the highest commendation; of Dr Stoll, who has taken 
as his field the numerous South Maya d.alects; of Dr. Sapper, whose 
recent linguistic map of Guatemala is most satisfactory; or Dr 
Darapsky whose analyses of South American groups are alw ays 
Sola lv of the Licentiate Belmar, who is exploring the unfilled 
field o Soul Mexican dialects; of Fernandez Ferraz, to whom w 
owe Enable publications on Central American nafive tongues o 
D^Leon who has opened the treasures of the Tarascan of the Abbe 
SffwSft-Wb the standard of Rmkand .to* 
auin whose works on the Eskimo are unsurpassed; and m th s list of 

h" e who'aYe lent the greatest aid to American hnguis to it wou 
be a signal omission to forget the name of James C. Pilling, whose 

bibSaphiesof the natfve languages of North America are unequaled 

in their class for fullness and accuracy. 



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